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[Conner]

I'd like to hear some stories of the first time you heard some of your work somewhere.(other than when you played it of course)

How about the first time you heard it on the radio? What was your feeling?

Just last night I walked into this bar and the album I just finished was playing over the house system. I kinda just quietly basked while I listened to the mix on the songs. It sounded great to me, and made me really proud. Kinda cool that no one was with me to witness it. Just kinda self gratifying.
Can't wait to hear it on the radio.

I'd love to hear some of your stories.

Thanks.
-Conner

[Rob Darling]

Yes, wonder of wonders, it was in a strip club as I was getting a lap dance.  Quite the perfect storm of niceness.

[j.hall]

i can't even remember the first time

usually it's at a party the band throws after we finish and the mastering ref comes back

i typically show up to the party alone, find a nice quiet corner to sit in and have a few beers.

as much of a "people" person as i am, at these types of events it is far to easy to step into the lime light that truly belongs to the band......every one there typically will think you are some sort of hero for merely pushing buttons.

the CD goes on.....people quiet down for a few minutes

the band finds me in the corner and the "inside jokes" begin

then every one knows who the quiet "old" guy in the corner is....and it's time to leave......i exit stage left politely.

my favorite story happened like this:

i do a very quick 5 song EP for some close friends that are very established in the local scene.  (not so much as a band, but more politically speaking)

anyway, they are, for all intents and purposes, a "slow-core" band.  very calculated and maticulous writing.  excellent players.....

the EP sounds vastly different then most everything else this town has produced. (i don't work with a lot of local bands here and the local tends to sound alike and have really bottom heavy mixes in a not so good way.)

i head down to the local indie rock hot spot (club du jour so to speak) to hang with friends and have a drink

the EP we just did (unmastered) comes on the house PA after the first band plays.

in a matter of 30 seconds i get wacked on the back.  i turn, and a friend says, "man, really nice job on this record."

"thanks"

20 seconds later.....SMACK
(what the hell)

another friend, "this sounds so kick ass....."

i got about 6 more of those while the record played.....that was a fine moment as i did nothing to let anyone know i recorded it.

[nother]

Most vivid memory is the first time I heard my work on the local light-rock station... as I was getting a tooth filled at the dentist's.
Very mixed feelings, but it helped me contextualize my stuff a lot better.

[Etch-A-Sketch]

The first time I had ever heard anything I mixed was a while ago when I was living in Boston.  I tracked and mixed a couple songs for some DJs that were somewhat big in the Northeast.  I remember walking into a dance club and hanging out with some friends.  Suddenly the song came on and you could feel the bass hitting you in the chest...I was like, "Wow...I did this?!"  It was a cool feeling.  Everybody was dancing and seemed to like the song.  After the first realization that your work is out in the public domain every other time you notice isn't as big a deal.  

I remember the first time I heard a track I mixed on a TV commercial...I was humming along with the commercial and was thinking to myself, "Why the hell do I know the music to this commercial?!"  Then I realized I had mixed it.

The first time I saw a song I had worked on playing on VH1 was kind of cool.  But everyone had already been telling me that they had already seen it and that it was in heavy rotation...so by the time I finally saw it (at 3am when I came home from a session) it wasn't really that big a deal.  I actually saw it on VH1 before I started hearing it on the radio too, so when I finally did hear it on the radio the magic was kind of worn off a little.

[JPRisus]

My "first time" was a very eye-opening experience... tracked/mixed a local band that was eventually released on a national indie, project was taken out of my hands at the last minute and sent to a mastering engineer approved by the band and label but sure as hell not by me. Then I hear it on the local college radio station and the originally dynamic mix is squashed to the point where the clean, open verses are louder (at least 2-3dB of apparent loudness) than the heavy-guitar choruses... at that moment I swore to never let that happen again, even if it meant turning down a project.

[Fibes]

In the hopes to kill any indy cred i may have by associating myself with J. i'll bite...

I got into recording in a very bizarre fashion via the classical world. My local NPR station hired me as a DJ when i was starting college and immediately after my first week their "engineer" that recorded the local symphony for their Sunday program left. So in essence i was the only one dumb enough to lug this 500 pound DBX converter/frying pan along with some mics, cables, digital recorder and a mini Studer mixer to the Civic center to record the symphony for local broadcast. 2-6 mics, mixed live via headphones and broadcast the following week with no mastering.
Guess who the fool was that worked on Sunday? Me. So in essence i had to sit there and listen to it whether i liked it or not.

As far as rock goes, i can't remember.

[j.hall]

Fibes wrote on Tue, 17 August 2004 12:05

In the hopes to kill any indy cred i may have by associating myself with J. i'll bite...

if people only   knew........................................................ .....

J.P.

i know the feeling man, i have the exact same story......but get this

i'm right in the thick of a full length with a local band (same band as the EP story i typed above).....the label is sending the record to the "mastering" (i use the quotes as strongly as i can) guy that i swore to never work with again.

[JPRisus]

j.hall wrote on Tue, 17 August 2004 14:09

J.P. i know the feeling man, i have the exact same story......but get this i'm right in the thick of a full length with a local band (same band as the EP story i typed above).....the label is sending the record to the "mastering" (i use the quotes as strongly as i can) guy that i swore to never work with again.

At least i'm not alone...

Since then, i tell bands straight-up that if i'm mixing, I reserve the right of choosing who will be mastering. I'm not gonna put mucho effort into something that I take great pride in to have it sent to a chop shop, regardless of who else frequents said mastering establishments. Some might say this is arrogant, I say it's preserving my integrity since i'll be the one who is MOST AFFECTED by results of mastering (Bad mastering doesn't stop albums from selling, that's for sure). Haven't had a problem or complaint in the past 6 months or so. When more label work comes around, it will be put in writing before the first fader is pulled up. Life's too short to see your work ruined IMHO.

Back on the topic, it's still a very rewarding feeling to hear something you toiled over receiving substantial airplay. Makes it all worth it when others appreciate it... I LOVE being that quiet guy in the corner, only i've got a Cohiba in one hand and a scotch in the other!

[spankenstein]

A band I did some demos for was on the local "alternative" station during their local music show.  They were in there with another band to promote a show that following week and they played the rough mixes of the demo that they had just done. It was strange hearing all the radio compression on it.

The band hand't heard this mix yet so they were getting a first listen as well. They said something about the sound and when the song was over the DJ made a comment about how good it sounded and asked them where they recorded. I got a couple other comments that week abotu how good that demo sounded. Made me feel good.

[Curve Dominant]

I got into this game by producing music for theater, which might be a little different from the intent of this thread...?? But that's the first time I heard my "work" in public: in a theater full of about 500 people.

It was kind of nerve-racking, because in a theater, it's a captive audience. And the first time was in my home town, in a theater full of mostly people who live in or near my hometown; plus all the local major and indie print media were there to document the proceedings.

So it kind of felt like my balls were on the chopping block, in advance. I wasn't "pleasantly surprised" by the first time I heard my "work" in public, because I saw it coming ahead of time.

I remember asking my parents and my girlfriend to stay away from the opening night. Because if I was going to get slaughtered, I would rather they not witness that.

It went well though. My piece got a standing ovation, and the artistic director dragged me onstage at the end to take a bow with the company. Great reviews in the press. ASCAP Composer award. Happy ending, blah blah blah.

Mind you, this was after a decade of playing in bands, floundering in the club scene, and shopping a bazillion band demos, with absolutely nothing to show for that.

Keep plugging away at this racket, and you never know what's going to pop up on the cultural radar, or when, or where. Just enjoy it if/when it does eventually happen. Soak it up for all it's worth, baby, because we all know life is full of hardship and pain. Take that moment of joy and savor it down to the last drop, because that's why we do this.

[micguy]

I did a recording of my own band, which got played on college radio. Somewhere, I think I still have a tape of the broadcast - kinda weird to have a tape of a broadcast of one of your own tapes! Still, the DJ complimented the quality of the recording, which was cool yet odd, because the reception was lousy that night, and you can't really hear how well it sounded over the radio.

[carne_de_res]

the first time i heard a mix of mine in public i
wanted to cry.
after four years things haven't changed much...i'm
never ever satisfied with my mixes.guess i'm shit at
mixing...

[hollywood_steve]

Although this was a very common occurence back then, its probably unheard of now-a-days......

Driving to lunch with some coworkers from my day job as a civil engineer when I was 24 or so and we were listening to the big Boston rock station WBCN, 104.1   They used to have a lunchtime show that would play a half-hour or an hour's worth of local rock.  (try finding anything like that on the number 1 station in a major market these days; and this was at noon, not 3am)

The band I was in had recorded its first demo's the week before at a local studio that didn't do much "indie" rock work.  They were more of a jingle house, so the engineer/owner pretty much let us run our own show.  This was way before CD-Rs became available, so bands still submitted their demos on cassettes and "carts".  I still cringe 20 years later if I listen to the mix on those tracks, but it sure sounded good in that car with my Dilbert-like co-workers.  

It was remarkably easy at that time for a young band to get its music played on one of the top rock stations in the country and during a prime listening slot, no less.  Today a band could spend its entire career trying to get the exposure offered in that 3 minute slot on 'BCN.  

[weihfool]

The first time was when I heard my band's second record played on the local college station here, 90.1 WUSB Stony Brook.  There's a show on there called "All Ages Show", which is where I got turned on to a lot of indie bands.  I was heading home from hanging with some friends at around 11ish on a Wednesday night and I heard the first few notes ringing out from one of our tunes.  I had a smile stuck to my face for a good week.  

The second time was when I heard a voice over session I had done on a TV commercial played on a cable station.  I was quite suprised at how good it sounded with all of the compression we had put on the background music.  Again, smile stuck to face for a week.  

[mogwailoveyou]

haha the first (and only time) I heard myself was when I was dj'ing for my college radio station, I had left a few of my early recordings (we're talking mic input of a computer using cool edit di'ing my acoustic and using a computer mic) with the rest of my record collection around the radio station. apparently one of the other dj's was going through and decided he liked it. one day i was in the middle of the student union when all of a sudden one of my least favorite songs came on. it was an odd mix of shock, embarrassment, and slight gratification... i know not exactly the same kind of story, but still slightly funny.